Eircom eFibre VDSL/FTTC rollout – plans to reach 1.6m premises by mid 2016

Richard Dower

Lovin the Vodafone modem....really want one!

ready_salted

Had my fibre set up this morning by Eircom engineers, must have only taken them around 15 minutes to have it all done as it only required changing the master socket. However, it did take a couple of hours for the internet connection to go live after I had self installed the Vodafone modem (really simple to do).



Really happy with these results, was averaging around 12 Mb/s before.

jantheman91

ready_salted wrote: »

Had my fibre set up this morning by Eircom engineers, must have only taken them around 15 minutes to have it all done as it only required changing the master socket. However, it did take a couple of hours for the internet connection to go live after I had self installed the Vodafone modem (really simple to do).



Really happy with these results, was averaging around 12 Mb/s before.

What was your ping before?

ElNino

I am in Ennis and I just got an interesting call from the installation schedulers. Next Wednesday was the earliest appointment so I grabbed that.

What was interesting was that I had ordered the 70mb product from eircom as I am only about 50 meters from a cabinet. However after I had confirmed my order on the website a message popped up saying that my line was only capable of 50mb. I was going to ask the guy about that but he actually beat me to it. He said that he was putting me on the 50mb unlimited product as my line wasn't capable of 70mb. I asked him if I could get the 70mb product to test what speed I would get and he then came clean and admitted that they are not selling the 70mb product yet. He said it would be towards the end of the year before it was released and that I could upgrade to it then. Anyone know if this is a local thing or a national thing?

ready_salted

The ping was normally in the 40 - 45 ms range before.

dubmick

ElNino wrote: »

I am in Ennis and I just got an interesting call from the installation schedulers. Next Wednesday was the earliest appointment so I grabbed that.

What was interesting was that I had ordered the 70mb product from eircom as I am only about 50 meters from a cabinet. However after I had confirmed my order on the website a message popped up saying that my line was only capable of 50mb. I was going to ask the guy about that but he actually beat me to it. He said that he was putting me on the 50mb unlimited product as my line wasn't capable of 70mb. I asked him if I could get the 70mb product to test what speed I would get and he then came clean and admitted that they are not selling the 70mb product yet. He said it would be towards the end of the year before it was released and that I could upgrade to it then. Anyone know if this is a local thing or a national thing?

I hope this isn't true. I am about 100 metres from a cabinet and would expect speeds of more than 70mb. Hope they are not going to drip feed us speeds increases.

jantheman91

ready_salted wrote: »

The ping was normally in the 40 - 45 ms range before.

I would have expected a bigger improvement. It is eircom though so it's highly likely they've went about everything the cheapest way possible to provide themselves with a greater profit margin.

That company is an absolute cancer, and needs to go in my opinion.

2013 and we're starting to get fibre broadband from the leading Irish ISP.... Says it all really.

/Rant.

Praetorian

elnino,

That cannot be true. All the advertising is for up to 70 mbit. Just wait, someone today or tomorrow will sicken us with speed tests near 70 mbit down and 20 up don´t worry!

ready_salted

jantheman91 wrote: »

I would have expected a bigger improvement. It is eircom though so it's highly likely they've went about everything the cheapest way possible to provide them with a greater profit margin.

That company is an absolute cancer, and needs to go in my opinion.

2013 and we're starting to get fibre broadband from the leading Irish ISP.... Says it all really.

/Rant.

Yeah I was hoping for a bigger improvement in the ping too, perhaps under 20 ms but I'm satisfied there has been any sort of improvement. Still delighted with the download and mostly definitely the upload as that was never above 0.54 Mb/s.
I have noticed some fluctuation when re-testing so perhaps some time is required for it to "settle".

jantheman91

ready_salted wrote: »

Yeah I was hoping for a bigger improvement in the ping too, perhaps under 20 ms but I'm satisfied there has been any sort of improvement. Still delighted with the download and mostly definitely the upload as that was never above 0.54 Mb/s.
I have noticed some fluctuation when re-testing so perhaps some time is required for it to "settle".

Cheers for the heads up.

I'd gladly trade 90% of my download speed for a ping under 20ms. Playing competitive Call of Duty on a 55ms is abysmal.

Highly irrelevant for me anyway as eFibre won't be available in my area until 2014 (What a surprise...).

DECEiFER

chriss745 wrote: »

Magnet sales told me that the same will be applied to all other ISP's, too. I don't know if I should believe it or not. I asked what is the workaround. If you are a business customer, this policy won't be applied.

I am considering now to switch or to convert myself to a business customer.

The only way to find out is to ask the other ISPs and to check on their AUP/FUPs to see if there's any mention of traffic management. I have a feeling that Magnet are lying. They're the cheapest of the bunch and don't have a contract, so this traffic management tomfoolery could be a trade-off. It's terrible and unrealistic.

Also, to anyone and everyone on FTTC, any chance of this?:

DECEiFER wrote: »

Could someone on FTTC be so kind as to throw up some DOS/terminal ping times? :pac:

Maybe with the following commands:

ping google.ie -n 20
ping boards.ie -n 20

It'd be nice to see how this compares to UPC and how it compares to Eircom's heavily interleaved ADSL packages.

Thanks.

Just people who have been upgraded to FTTC as it'd be great to see how the new service compares. If we could get at least a few people to do post theirs, it'd be great. Speedtest.net pings are not reliable. Pingtest.net uses Java, whereas Speedtest.net doesn't. Flash on its own isn't accurate, it's not even great at measuring throughput accurately. Though Pingtest.net is more accurate because it uses Java, DOS/terminal ping times would still be preferred.

Mickalus

DECEiFER wrote: »

The only way to find out is to ask the other ISPs and to check on their AUP/FUPs to see if there's any mention of traffic management. I have a feeling that Magnet are lying. They're the cheapest of the bunch and don't have a contract, so this traffic management tomfoolery could be a trade-off. It's terrible and unrealistic.

I saw on the magnet site at one point recently a small print note saying about a cancellation fee. I'd read the small print before I signed up for a "No Contract" contract.

They've updated their site recently ...
Terms are here:
https://www.magnet.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Fatpipe-Terms-starting-20th-May-2013.pdf

"2.4 Minimum Period of Service
The Minimum Period of Service is thirty days (30) starting from the date of this Agreement unless otherwise specified in the order (“Minimum Period of Service”).
2.5 Cancellation
Once the Minimum Period of Service is over, you must end the Service by giving us one (1) month’s notice in writing at any time. Please email cancellations@magnet.ie or fax 01 681 0005 marked for the attention of Cancellation Department or post to Cancellation Department, Magnet Networks, International Exchange Centre, Clonshaugh, Dublin 17. Termination requests over the telephone are not sufficient.
Customer will be charged a"

It actually ends like that..... Customers will be charged a.... [insert random crazy charge here]
From what I can remember it was 50 quid.

DECEiFER

Mickalus wrote: »

I saw on the magnet site at one point recently a small print note saying about a cancellation fee. I'd read the small print before I signed up for a "No Contract" contract.

They've updated their site recently ...
Terms are here:
https://www.magnet.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Fatpipe-Terms-starting-20th-May-2013.pdf

"2.4 Minimum Period of Service
The Minimum Period of Service is thirty days (30) starting from the date of this Agreement unless otherwise specified in the order (“Minimum Period of Service”).
2.5 Cancellation
Once the Minimum Period of Service is over, you must end the Service by giving us one (1) month’s notice in writing at any time. Please email cancellations@magnet.ie or fax 01 681 0005 marked for the attention of Cancellation Department or post to Cancellation Department, Magnet Networks, International Exchange Centre, Clonshaugh, Dublin 17. Termination requests over the telephone are not sufficient.
Customer will be charged a"

It actually ends like that..... Customers will be charged a.... [insert random crazy charge here]
From what I can remember it was 50 quid.

Ah, anyone on Magnet, save a copy of that and take a screen shot. It's a way out without paying a charge. Of course, to ensure they don't take your money, you'd have to cancel their access to your account (direct debit or debit/credit card), but they wouldn't be able to sue you for the cost or whatever since their terms, a fully legal document, do not mention a specific charge. So anyone who signs up while the omission is present, there no legal way to charge them any cancellation fee.

AlanS181824

I wonder when Sky will start offering FTTC.

jantheman91

AlanS181824 wrote: »

I wonder when Sky will start offering FTTC.

If Eircom are anything to go by - 2096.

Praetorian

jantheman91 wrote: »

If Eircom are anything to go by - 2096.

Sky could offer it quickly if they want to. Some operators have been very slow to get to market relatively speaking. Sky may not have the backhaul in place and the systems and personnel. It is inevitable that they will come to market in the end.

Not all the current providers have put their cards on the table. There is still no word from Imagine for example. A well established operator.

Digiweb only partly seem to be up & running with their offers.

brav

400-500m from cabinet
Prior to VDSL:

After VDSL:

Ping(unchanged):

64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=30.908 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=27.769 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=28.283 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=27.907 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=28.463 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=28.048 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=6 ttl=57 time=28.086 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=7 ttl=57 time=28.368 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=8 ttl=57 time=27.968 ms
64 bytes from 89.234.66.108: icmp_seq=9 ttl=57 time=29.468 ms

DECEiFER

brav wrote: »

400-500m from cabinet
Prior to VDSL:

After VDSL:

Ping(unchanged):

Wow, they really haven't done much for their ping times. They're still using heavy interleaving. Jesus Christ, that's no good. You'd want 10-12ms max, when the conditions are at their best. It's certainly not very good for gaming. They turned on interleaving for all their ADSL packs in July 2008 when they first brought out speeds of 7.6Mb/s. Of course, all customers on re-sellers like UTV and Vodafone were affected. They need to go back to fastpath or set the interleaving to the lowest possible, or whatever they were doing before July 2008, because before then we were able to get up to 3Mb/s and the average domestic ping time was ~15ms.

red_bairn

DECEiFER wrote: »

Wow, they really haven't done much for their ping times. They're still using heavy interleaving. Jesus Christ, that's no good. You'd want 10-12ms max, when the conditions are at their best. It's certainly not very good for gaming. They turned on interleaving for all their ADSL packs in July 2008 when they first brought out speeds of 7.6Mb/s. Of course, all customers on re-sellers like UTV and Vodafone were affected. They need to go back to fastpath or set the interleaving to the lowest possible, or whatever they were doing before July 2008, because before then we were able to get up to 3Mb/s and the average domestic ping time was ~15ms.

yeah, I remember having 40-50ms on a UK Gaming server when we were on a 3meg conenction. We're currently on the 8Mb connection and I get 60-70ms.

DECEiFER

red_bairn wrote: »

yeah, I remember having 40-50ms on a UK Gaming server when we were on a 3meg conenction. We're currently on the 8Mb connection and I get 60-70ms.

Same here. At the time, I tried to beg and plead with UTV (my ISP from May 2008 to January 2012) to fix it but they were either unwilling or powerless.

It's such a shame that the new services are affected. One of the benefits of using a fiber connection (at least for most of the route) is lower ping times. For example, on FTTH, you shouldn't be getting more than 1-2ms on average, certainly no more than 4ms, when pinging domestic servers. That's what having an all-fiber route can do. I've seen pings from people with FTTH connections in Sweden from as early as 2005 and they were always fantastic.

30ms over FTTC is someone's idea of a bad joke.

DECEiFER

Here's the difference between fastpath and interleaving:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/663

I've always seen it as a redundancy that isn't needed for people on good quality lines. It certainly shouldn't be required on FTTC. All it's doing is slowing down your packets, there should absolutely be no need for it in the vast majority of cases. Noisy lines were the most prone. I remember my line had 2dB Line Attenuation up and down, it was as good as it got, being only 100m from the exchange, and I still couldn't convince anyone at UTV to get my connection on fastpath.

Tommy Lagahan

Hmm all the pings so far are higher than mine at the moment, I'm hoping to break the sub 10ms barrier (local servers obviously, can't do anything about international pings ) when I get mine in.
I'll ask the techs to see if they know about/can put me on fastpath, as it is my line quality is near perfect loss/distance so it shouldn't be a problem when I'm far closer to the exchange/cabinet.
I'll ask the lads up the road from me to do these tests as well when they get fibre in tomorrow, as they're on the same low ping as me (~12ms to google.ie).
I'll actually ask the uncle who's working for Eircom if there is a choice in this matter. If not I'll complain to him till he fixes it for me :pac:

DECEiFER

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Hmm all the pings so far are higher than mine at the moment, I'm hoping to break the sub 10ms barrier (local servers obviously, can't do anything about international pings ) when I get mine in.
I'll ask the techs to see if they know about/can put me on fastpath, as it is my line quality is near perfect loss/distance so it shouldn't be a problem when I'm far closer to the exchange/cabinet.
I'll ask the lads up the road from me to do these tests as well when they get fibre in tomorrow, as they're on the same low ping as me (~12ms to google.ie).

Anyone on FTTC should have low noise since the distance to the cabinet (usually less than 1km, often less than 500m) is the factor instead of to the exchange. So everyone with FTTC should be on fastpath. Good luck with it, and please let us know how you get on.

smemon

Lots of activity in Monaghan over past few days, seen lots of eircom & private network vans round the place and one or two new cabinets gone up too.

We're scheduled to go live in May / June so hoping everything is on course and they'll be switched on any day now...

red_bairn

DECEiFER wrote: »

Same here. At the time, I tried to beg and plead with UTV (my ISP from May 2008 to January 2012) to fix it but they were either unwilling or powerless.

It's such a shame that the new services are affected. One of the benefits of using a fiber connection (at least for most of the route) is lower ping times. For example, on FTTH, you shouldn't be getting more than 1-2ms on average, certainly no more than 4ms, when pinging domestic servers. That's what having an all-fiber route can do. I've seen pings from people with FTTH connections in Sweden from as early as 2005 and they were always fantastic.

30ms over FTTC is someone's idea of a bad joke.

That was my connection while teaching in Korea.^^^^

PeadarB

Manc Red wrote: »

Haven't seen any activity in the mountain top area. When/if you do get connected, please tell us how it goes.

Manc my cab is at Binnion Avenue about 180 - 200 meters from the house. I'm sorely sickened here though. Put in my interest notice in march when it became available, my pre-order went in mid-April and was "lost". I've waited all bloody evening for a call back that was due at 5.

Not very encouraging at all. I'll keep you updated though.

Tommy Lagahan

DECEiFER wrote: »

Here's the difference between fastpath and interleaving:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/663

Does IPTV require the kind of stability this link claims Cable over copper needs?
Could be the reason people are still on it, I don't know if its widespread knowledge but the uncle was saying they're going to sell an IPTV package along with this at some stage.

Praetorian

It would be nice to see some Eircom test results...or are they only installing vodafone customers!

DECEiFER

red_bairn wrote: »

That was my connection while teaching in Korea.^^^^

ICMP 100ms? UDP is used for gaming and it's a lot faster than TCP at the cost of reliability.

South Korea has great connections, I knew a guy from the US who also taught over there and showed us his speed tests, but I'm not sure how they fare out when connecting to international servers.

Simi

I'm sure a lot of you have already done this and gotten nowhere, but try asking your provider to turn off interleaving. I'm with vodafone and asked one of the reps on the vodafone forums could he turn down the interleaving, and the next day he called up and changed me back to fastpath while I was on the phone and asked me to run a few ping/speed tests to make sure the line was stable. Ping dropped from 35 to 15/16ms just like that.

Maybe wait a week until things have calmed down a bit. I'm sure they're more than a little busy at the moment.